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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Battle Roads tournament report!

Hello all the The Deck Out followers!

I just came home after a very interesting weekend and I’m back with a special
update – my tournament report! I played a Battle Road this Sunday and was very
excited because it was my first tournament of the year. At the moment I don’t
have that many chances to go to the tournaments so I didn’t want to play
metagame. I was playing the deck I call Electroman (named after that song from
Benny Bennanssi and T-Pain). Here is the decklist:

I once called this deck ZRE because It has Zekrom,
Reshiram and Electrode but it also had Tornadus so I didn’t want to disgrace one
of my favorite decks. And Electroman is a nice name so why not.

I’ve always loved cards like Electrode ex which versatility is unbelievable.
Electrode Prime is considered as a horrible card but with Research Records,
Junk Arms and Twins it’s pretty decent. This deck’s main strategy is to blow up
1 Electrode Prime and live with those energies and your turn energies for the
rest of the game while killing things with Catcher and Digimons. It only
problems are decks like Gothitelle and Ross’ decks but it has an answer against
them as well because you can blow 2 Electrodes and keep the game tied. These 2
decks work with Twins but with Electrode Prime you have the board control and
they can’t use Twins. I love this deck and I’ll make a big blog entry about
this deck if anyone wants to learn more about this deck and its possibilities.

I ended up playing this deck because I borrowed a deck for 4 players so this
was all I had left. And as I said earlier I don’t want to play meta and I love
this deck so it seemed like an natural option.

Now for the tournament.

We had 43 players in Masters so it was pretty big tournament and it started a
little late.

Interesting fact: I started 5 games
with a lone Voltorb…

1. Round (Mewgar/Muk/Vileplume)

As soon as I realized what I was playing against and survived the lone
Voltorb start, I knew it was an auto-win. I blowed-up my 2 Trodes T2 and 3 so
he didn’t get Twins going and while he didn’t draw Vileplume because he
couldn’t use Twins I just ran through him with Tornadus. It was a funny game
because until the end of his last turn, he had more Pokémons in Lost Zone than
I did XD (Muk and Gengar).

2. Round (Reshiram/Typhlosion)

I got a pretty decent opening hand and T2 Trode blowing up. I got 2 DCEs
and 2 Basic energies from the Electrode with the help of Research Records. I
could Catcher him every turn which crippled his set-up completely. He really
didn’t even get a set-up in this game because I killed his Cyndaquils and
Quilavas before they could evolve.

3. Round (Reshiram/Emboar)

Once again I start with a lone Voltorb but I get to go first. I used
Collector and hit 30 to his Tepig. Next turn he just Collectored 2 Reshirams
and a Tepig. I knew that I didn’t have anything that could OHKO fully HP
Reshirams so I had to take a risk and attach 2nd energy to active Voltorb,
evolve it into Electrode Prime and killed Tepig with Gigashock. The best thing
about Gigashock is that it hit 10 to 2 benched Pokémons. It was just enough to
get the Reshirams into the KO range of my Zekroms/Reshirams. It’s funny how a
horrible attacker like Electrode Prime can really win you games. Well, the next
turn I just blowed up the Electrode once again and started killing Tepigs with
Zekrom. My bench was fully loaded with energies so I knew I had the game once I
had the 3 prize lead + 10 damages on the 2 Reshirams.
3-0

I was happy because I was 3-0 and because my deck was worked very well so far.
I had used every card of the deck and it really didn’t have weak spots. After
the 3rd round was the lunch break but for some reason I’m incapable
of eating during tournaments so I just stalled around the place and talked to
people while waiting for the lunch break to end.

4. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin)

I start with a lone Voltorb and he goes first donking me with Outrage and 2
Pluspowers. PP.
3-1

I had lots of time to play around during this round so I watched my friends’
games and waited anxiously for the next game.

5. Round (Zoroark/Yanmega/Cinccino)

This match was probably the worst of the days matches. We both got a bad
start but because Tornadus is obviously a better starter than Zorua, I just run
through him with a lone Tornadus because he didn’t draw anything in the whole
game. I don’t like playing these kind of games.
4-1

6. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin/Tyrogue)

I start – surprise, surprise – with a lone Voltorb and he retreats Zekrom
with DCE and donks my Voltorb with Tyrogue and Pluspower.
4-2

Yeah, I was frustrated because I didn’t have that many good games during the
tournament and my both loses were donks. Fortunately I knew that my tiebreak
was pretty high so I fugred I could have a good chance top cutting. And so I
did. I ended up 7th place and
playing against my big brother – yeah right.

Top8 (Reshiram/Typhlosion)

1. Game

I had tested this match-up with my brother 2 months ago and knew it was
pretty even. And so it was. I tried to lure him into retreating his Typhlosion
Prime with 120 on it, with Afterburner and turn energy but I think he was one
of the few that knew what Electrode Prime
did ( he had a second Typhlosion with 120 damage on it on the bench as well).
If he had retreated the Typhlosion with Afterburner I could have Catchered the
other Typhlosion and Gigashocked the both Typhlosions for 2 prizes. Instead of
retreating he figured to start a brainless prize-trade which ended up 1 prize
in his favor because he started the game.
0-1(4-3)
2. Game

I get to go first and used Pokegear. I whiffed the Collector which I needed for
the T1 donk. Instead of donking I just attached an energy to the active
Tornadus and passed. He didn’t get a fast set-up but because I missed my all
DCEs (I had 3 DCEs in my 5 card deck in the end of the game), Energymite
discarded Junk Arm, Catcher and a Shaymin and he draw his last Junk Arm AND
Catcher from the PONT he won the game by one prize. If anything would have gone
differently, I would have won the game but too bad I had bad luck and that’s
it.
0-2(4-4)

After the game I was pretty frustrated about my bad luck so I figured it would
be the best to go eat something good with friends and so I did. Good food –
better mood.

My big brother ended up placing 2nd, losing to a ReshiBoar in the
finals. The Reshiboar player has won our both tournaments this season so it was
nice seeing him win again. Well, I didn’t gain any Championship Points but it
really doesn’t matter – I don’t have money to go to Hawaii. I know most people
are interested in our metagame so here are the top8 decks.

As you can see Zekrom was highly represented in our BRs but in the end Reshi
variants were better. This was only a one tournament but I can easily say that
the top2 decks in this format are ReshiPlosion/Reshiboar and Zekrom/Tornadus.
And if look at the BR results from the U.S. we can see the same. I’ll get into
the deeper analysis of the results of the Battle Roads next month but I hope
you enjoyed my article and don’t hesitate to leave feedback!

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to come back this Friday when it’s time to analyze one of the tier1 decks –
Zekrom/Tornadus!

6 comments:

Interesting deck. Why do you put so much Tornadus in it ? Reading your report, it looks like Zekrom is more important than Tornadus to the deck (except round 5 :p ).I also notice you didn't put any Dual Ball, instead there is Bianca. Any reason behind that ?

Playing 4 Tornadus is a must because you want to start with it and take the easy prizes with it because that way you can load Zekroms. If you use Zekroms early game, you're screwed because you don't have enough enery acceleration for Zekrom's because they're easily KOed back.

And as you can see from my deck, there is no flip. Dual Ball is a horredous card in this deck because you need 2 Voltorbs on your bench everytime. With Dual Ball that doesn't work unless you flip every flip heads. And Collector is better against trainer lock as well. AND you can get Collector with Pokegear, which is great in your first turn.

I experienced Bianca in this deck and it worked very well. This deck doesn't want to shuffle the certain cards in to the deck so Bianca worked very well.

I've tried a variant of this deck, in mine I put a 2-2 RDL line in. In your list you have no way to beat Gothitelle which is a major deterrent to me, but you already have the energy for RDL (I switched some Fire for Rainbow BTW) and it OHKOs everything in the format sans a rogue Tyranitar deck. You could also runs a 1-1 or 2-2 DCL to beat Gothitelle, again all you need to change is add rainbows over fire/lightning. The best part about the legends is you run twins. The only downside is they can be prized or discarded (a 2-2 line rectifies this but also takes more space)